he Book of the Leo
(doubtless a translation or adaptation from Machault) and many other
books which the writer forgets, and "many a song and many a lecherous
lay," all the principal poetical works of Chaucer (with the exception
of the "Romaunt of the Rose") discussed in this essay. On the other
hand, he offers thanks for having had the grace given him to compose
his translation of Boethius and other moral and devotional works.
There is, to be sure, no actual evidence to decide in either way the
question as to the genuineness of this "Prayer," which is entirely one
of internal probability. Those who will may believe that the monks,
who were the landlords of Chaucer's house at Westminster, had in one
way or the other obtained a controlling influence over his mind.
Stranger things than this have happened; but one prefers to believe
that the poet of the "Canterbury Tales" remained master of himself to
the last. He had written much which a dying man might regret; but it
would be sad to have to think that, "because of humility," he bore
false witness at the last against an immortal part of himself--his
poetic genius.

CHAPTER 3. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER AND OF HIS POETRY.

Thus, then, Chaucer had passed away;--whether in good or in evil odour
with the powerful interest with which John of Gaunt's son had entered
into his unwritten concordate, after all matters but little now. He is
no dim shadow to us, even in his outward presence; for we possess
sufficient materials from which to picture to ourselves with good
assurance what manner of man he was. Occleve painted from memory, on
the margin of one of his own works, a portrait of his "worthy master,"
over against a passage in which, after praying the Blessed Virgin to
intercede for the eternal happiness of one who had written so much in
her honour, he proceeds as follows:--

Although his life be quenched, the resemblance
Of him hath in me so fresh liveliness,
That to put other men in remembrance
Of his person I have here his likeness
Made, to this end in very soothfastness,
That they that have of him lost thought and mind
May by the painting here again him find.

In this portrait, in which the experienced eye of Sir Harris Nicolas
sees "incomparably the best portrait of Chaucer yet discovered," he
appears as an elderly rather than aged man, clad in dark gown and
hood--the latter of the fashion so familiar to us from this very
picture, and from th